Most ancient creation myths come down to us in the form of narratives due to their transmission via oral tradition. Even gnomic literature within such traditions tends to narrativize cosmology, describing the structure of our world in terms of a narrative of its origins and personalizing the physical or material elements of our world to make them memorable.
The Biblical story of Creation, embodied in the book of Genesis, and the classical Greek account embodied...
Most ancient creation myths come down to us in the form of narratives due to their transmission via oral tradition. Even gnomic literature within such traditions tends to narrativize cosmology, describing the structure of our world in terms of a narrative of its origins and personalizing the physical or material elements of our world to make them memorable.
The Biblical story of Creation, embodied in the book of Genesis, and the classical Greek account embodied in Hesiod's Theogony both share in common many oral characteristics. They both present the structure of the world in narrative form, describe creation as the act of a divine creator, and describe the origin of humanity in the form of a story with a moral. They both present stories of decline, where humanity originally lived in an idyllic world but through some act that offended their gods or God were condemned to live a short, miserable life, toiling for their food.
The Biblical story is monotheistic, with a single God, rather than the warring generations of the gods we find in Hesiod. The act that precipitated humanity's downfall was disobedience in both cases, and both accounts tend to place the blame on women.
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